Wild Dances in Lonely Skies
by Leaf Skeletons
Summary: The thoughts of a demigod as he dies, and the events leading to the fall. Set in The Last Olympian.


Wild Dances in Lonely Skies

He wondered if it was his fault as he fell, descending like a pebble falling into the depths of the ocean; chaotic and frenzied; but cushioned at the same time- falling, yes, but also flying.

Through chunks of dancing stone he flew, through splashes of dirty water and snippets of dark sky. He thought it was the queerest thing, to find a source of pure light shouting for him through the waltz of mad colour.

He was falling.

* * *

A stray thought nudged him as the forty orange shirt clad children clustered, alone in the swelling silence, shadowed by the giant Manhattan skyscrapers. There could have been more, he thought, noting how pathetic their numbers were. There could have been a few more had Michael just given fucking Clarisse that fucking chariot in the first fucking place, no?

But he was the leader and there was no time to dwell over sour thoughts. He had a job to do.

He knew his siblings were scared, and he was too. They had fought battles before, but this? This was the genuine shit. The apocalyptic end-all. And the scary thing was, he thought, the silence; sitting in the waiting room, alone.

"Kayla, Austin." His half-siblings snapped to attention beside him, their eyes keen and wild. "Go set the traps, along the bridge." They hurried off. He took a deep breath, motioning to Will. "You're beside me, dumbass. Got that?" He turned again to look at Louis and Marie; at fifteen, they were the youngest of the lot. He felt his heart lurch forward in his chest and the sight of the fright on their faces. "You two, behind us, okay?"

The silence had grown now; it had become a beast knocking on the doors of death.

He looked to Will for reassurance. "See you, buddy."

"I'll still be here?"

"Well, we won't be together throughout this whole shit-fest, eh?"

The older boy let his arrow sail through the storm-strewn skies, and the rest of the Apollo cabin followed suit. The sight of the monstrous numbers of the enemy rubbed into his skin, burrowing itself into his veins: they were alone, so alone and small- but the trumpet had sounded and they were moving now. Faster and faster-

He gripped his arrows and straightened his back, facing the enemy with a gleam in his eye. The silence had ended and the music had come running, the wind whistling in his ears.

Let them come.

* * *

He was letting loose arrow after arrow, a steady stream of them, seemingly; but his luck would end soon and his quiver would be bare, he knew that.

The sounds around him were horrible in their intensity, the screams and the clashes, the angry gnashes and wild keening. Blinking the dust from his eyes, he stared down at the chaos enveloping them, at the wild grace with which Percy Jackson was slashing through the enemy. Out of the corner of those eyes, he noticed a group of enemy demigods setting up a cluster of bombs dangerously close to where Kayla had set one of his traps and just like that, with bubbling urgency, he knew what was going to happen.

Looking towards the rest of his siblings, he saw that Will had followed his instructions to bring them to the foot of the bridge to get a better position. It was fine then; he thought frantically, they would all be safe from… No wait, Percy was still fucking there!

"Percy!" He yelled, but the boy hadn't heard him. The edges of the bridge were a burning, hysterical orange of curling fire. He screamed to the Gods again, teetering ont the suspension cable, a cloud of people struggling to run past him on the thin line. "Percy!"

Turn the fuck around, for the sake of the fucking Gods! The flame was spreading and soon the blaze would come.

"Percy!" He screamed for the third time, and finally,_ finally_, the boy turned around. "Percy! The bridge!" Percy's eyes flashed with sudden understanding and he started running back. "It's already weak!"

Percy stopped and waited, clutching Riptide and his thoughts were spilling, spilling, spilling. "Break it!" He screamed, "Use your powers!"

Percy stood still for another moment before sinking his sword into the bridge. The structure began to break apart.

He started running back as well, streaming past the battle in his hurry to return to safety when he saw one of the enemy demigods fall down next to him, her feet crushed under a chunk of flying marble.

"Help!" She screeched, trembling insanely with screaming fear. No one heard her of course, but him. He hesitated- she was the fucking enemy, after all; but he realised that he might have known her, and there was something so pleading in her scared eyes. He couldn't leave her to die on a burning bridge, he simply just. Couldn't. So he dropped to his knees and pulled her out, struggling to do so, and finally she was free and she mumbled a thank you and then it happened- the blast, coinciding with perfect precision with the crumbling of the bridge.

His hands, once on hers, were flying and she was gone as well. He thought he saw her swirling in a mass of horror in the air before he was pulled down and eclipsed the by debris. His vision was a swirling mass of marble and water and every-fucking-thing and he realised he was falling.

Maybe, if they had had more reinforcements, this wouldn't have happened.

Falling, but also flying. A bright flash of light illuminated the bleakness of his sight and he clung to it like a drowning man gasping for air, like a broken child clinging to his mother.

He realised that he had lost his arrow.

It was the water he hit, her cool fingers dragging him slowly under with the ferocity of a thousand lions. He struggled to keep his head afloat, swimming madly against the dust and broken stone. He was pulled down again, the bubbles jumping around him, ribbons of orange and yellow fire exploding above the water. It was so madly intoxicating, like being inside a kaleidoscope.

Come on, come the fuck on! All he needed was something to hold, he thought, and then he would be safe. Nothing came to him though, and it was just him alone there, being tossed wildly back and forth and growing so tired. He was so tired. His fingers scrabbled at the surface of the river, trying to return to the air and the land, but he just couldn't do it and the water was pouring into his lungs and squeezing him and it was getting tighter and tighter.

Michael Yew drew a ragged breath and let the water fill him as he fell asleep within her grasp and was pulled by her currents out to the lonely sea.


End file.
